Saturday, 30 August 2008

I finally broke down and joined the Xbox360 gang yesterday. I bought it for GTAIV of course but I've hardly played it because I've been hooked on Racedriver GRID; a racing sim featuring a variety of car types from Touring to Formula 1 via Destruction Derby. I missed a whole generation of racing games (apart from Mario Kart of course) so it's taken a lot of adjustment. I'm loving it though.

I wrote about Gary McKinnon at the start of the month. He has now had his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights denied. He faces extradition in the next two weeks. Imagine how scary that must be.

An inventive combination of exciting products, the new Soundwave MP3 player features an all new character mold and fully functional integrated digital music player! Soundwave's cassette door opens to reveal a Mini SD card reader (Mini SD card is not included). Batteries are required, but not included. The MP3 player will function in both cassette mode and robot mode. The edges are slightly rounded and it has a smooth look overall in player mode.

WANT!!!. Jack just sent this over. At £99.99 it might actually be worth it too.

I have a weird relationship with Kanye's last album. It's got a couple of songs that I can't stand ('Stronger' and 'Drunk and Hot Girls') but overall it's amazing. The DJ Toomp affect separates it from Kanye's first two albums completely. But depending on the day of the week I'll say I either like it, or I think it's boring. Interestingly though, when I'm leaving out to a meeting or something early in the day, I will run through the albums on my iPod and 9 times out of 10 I'll draw for 'Graduation'. I realised I was doing it one day and asked myself 'Why?'. I figured it out. The first song on the album is 'Good Morning', which is a great record as is, but the fact that it's called 'Good Morning' and actually has this feel of a long journey about it, I instinctively associate the album with getting started early in the day. Kanye knew that when he made this song! The dastardly devil!

The video for the song is pretty awesome too. I was just asking Jack the other day why standard, regular-old animation isn't used more these days. I like the CGI and whatnot but sometimes you just need the primary colours in 2-D.

Like most people with a TV this summer I've enjoyed The Olympics a lot. Beyond all the politics and bullshit (of which there was much), the actual games were a lot of fun, particularly when the track and field got going in the later stages. I definitely felt a lot of pride for the Team GB sportsmen and women, there were some quite incredible feats achieved in Beijing. Not just by the winners and medalists but those who reached quarter, semi and finals in record breaking disciplines. Now without getting into the politics of hosting the games in London (I will do but frankly I have 4 years) it has to be said that the opportunities afforded our poorest potential sportsmen and women in this country is not good enough. I heard a debate on the radio where a lot of people claimed that Britain was only successful in the "Toff Sports". I don't agree with that, you could argue that the boats are a bit out of the reach of the common man, but to be honest, every sport is out of the reach of the common man as things stand, there appears to be no effort to unearth a sporting gem in the deprived areas of London (South London certainly). It's the same thing with football, if Fulham Football Club weren't so commendably involved in local football in South London there would be no communication from the game at all, or the government who I think has a responsibility. Jeremy Paxman's TV, The Brit School's music industry and the Toff's Olympics? "All us blacks got is sports and entertainment, until we're even" Not hardly. This government's general disdain for sports among youth has been pretty clear for all to see though. Nobody loses at sports day any more, rugby and boxing are all but illegal and good luck trying to find a school with proper outdoor field facilities in the major cities.

Jeremy Paxman is one of those people you can't help but admire and I'm sure he had his reasons for saying this but frankly it's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. Maybe ever. Probably ever. Is it harder for a middle class male to be the absolute overlord of television in this country? Maybe. How would I know? Is it harder for a middle class male to be everything else in television in this country? Like fuck it is! Everybody I've ever come into contact with in television who has any power at all has been a middle class male. It's a problem actually. Television sucks because it's full of middle class males trying to lower themselves to the lowest common denominator in an attempt to appeal to "Middle England" which doesn't exist. I'm very, very sick of seeing floppy fringed, "Wacky", "rebellious" white middle class TV presenters in "Youth clothing" on British television in particular. Ho hum. I will meet Jeremy Paxman one day and ask him about this.

This is going to be a party of epic proportions. A load of celebrity DJs and such. It was originally scheduled for September 18th at The End but you know how that goes. It's an exclusive invite only function/affair but I'm definitely going to have some invites for Devil In The Distance scum bag regulars such as yourselves a little closer to the date.

Word. Back to the mixtape. Oh no wait. I have some articles I've been brewing up over the weekend. Then mixtape.

Monday, 25 August 2008

I'm actually being totally serious here. Being the logical human being that I am; I've always been a bit conflicted by Global Warming as a concept. I, like a lot of people require further proof before we go ultra-Al Gore on this shit. That being said, I recycle and have half an eye on carbon emissions and such because either way you can't argue that the earth is pretty disgusting at this point. Especially in the Cities. But it has to be said that while the extreme weather over the past few summers was used as proof of global warming, this summer would surely act as proof that what we experienced was unconnected to the O-Zone? No? This summer has been crappy. Not that I mind particularly, I've lived in Britain my whole life; this is pretty much how it's always been. Also it means I'm not so salty shouting into a mic every afternoon, I'm not missing much am I? The Olympics kept me pretty entertained too.

Friday, 22 August 2008

In the height of the feud between Nas and Jay-Z both released their best albums since their respective debuts (Jay's was arguably his best period). Both 'Blueprint' and 'Stillmatic' got 5/5 ratings in the (then) credible hip-hop bible The Source. I don't think there's much argument in 2008 about whether or not 'Blueprint' is a classic record; it's widely regarded. But 'Stillmatic' hasn't aged very well. There were always question marks over songs like 'Braveheart Party' (which was actually removed from the tracklisting in the album's second run), 'The Flyest' and 'Rule' featuring Amerie. The obvious path to understanding the overrating of 'Stillmatic' would be to look at the production list, the title track and intro was produced by The Source's evil overlord and general humorous geezer Benzino and his production company. Suspect? Why of course. But it appears there were even greater incentives for the magazine to see Nas succeed as revealed by former editor-in-chief in her new novel about her life in hip-hop...

“We waited until the SUV’s backseat window slowly rolled down and we saw Nas’ face hiding behind a pair of dark, don’t-notice-me sunglasses. From where I was sitting, I could see everything inside the car. Holding a cane, Nas was reclined in the backseat behind the passenger side wearing a red, black, and green kufi and a matching dashiki. From that moment on, we used the code name Zamunda when referring to him. Zamunda was the fictional country in Africa that Eddie Murphy came from in my favorite movie of all time, Coming To America.”

When 'Stillmatic' was first released to select press in 2001 it actually received horrible reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone who gave it 2.5/5 calling it "a jumble of sloppy filler". I actually kinda like 'Stillmatic' but the idea of it being a perfect album always confused me.

Shout outs to Karl in the comments section of the last Westwood post. He directed me to this video. It's amazing. 1987 London, a beautiful thing to behold. Trevor Nelson's cameo is quality too. This was an Open Space Film for the BBC.

I just spotted this on DJ MK's blog. It's the first episode of something called "NSign Radio" on something called "Night Network". It was way back in 1987 and Tim Westwood was killing it! That Eric-B & Rakim video at the beginning is class.

Thursday, 21 August 2008

Will Arnett is a funny man. Why did he do this? Some American comedy websites are claiming that this is funny. Did they actually get Spinal Tap? This clip is difficult to watch, but worth it to see how wrong you can get it. I think the show [film?] is called The Rockers.

Monday, 18 August 2008

I just listened to this the other day. I enjoyed it a lot. The whole direction of my writing changed when I made 'I Don't Go (Alone)'. I really wish we'd made a video for it at the time. You can buy 'Hoods & Badges EP' for just £1.49 on iTunes. A random thing to blog I know, but sometimes you just get to reminiscing.Also the mixtape we put out to promote the EP. We mixed this with Akira The Don. He did a hell of a lot on this tape actually. All through this period of recording and promoting the mixtape and EP we were on our faces broke. We funded everything ourselves at that point, which meant that we owned the recordings which is good, but it also meant we relied on the help of friends like Akira a lot. We'd pretty much just met him too. We did 'Boom (Smash Stuff)', then we did a few gigs around that and one night at The Buffalo Bar Akira hadn't slept in a long while and had quite a decent amount of alcohol in his system we decided to get together and work this mixtape out. I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. A fruitful relationship though I think you'll agree. Most recently culminating in a collaboration that will feature on ATD 16- which is available for pre-order right now!

Shout outs to Shinobi who just hit me with this mixtape. Mr Bang On is out of Liverpool and featured on the latest Hip-Hop Connection cover-disc. Show N Prove are big in the mixtape and production game. This shit goes very hard. I love Liverpool, I always get a good response in Liverpool, I've been waiting for a rapper to come out with some shit from Liverpool for a minute, last time I was there some kids promised me there was going to be some serious shit coming.

The boarded up flat seems to have made a sharp comeback over the last two or so months. I'm thinking about taking a photo of every one I see and posting them here. It's a powerful image. According to The British Chambers of Commerce we are six to nine months away from a full-blown recession in the UK. Who remembers the "Credit crunch"?

Sunday, 17 August 2008

I'm personally not an MF Doom fan. I quite liked his 'Dangerdoom' album and his beats on 'Fishscale' but overall I would definitely not call myself a fan. I'm not really a CunninLynguists fan either. They've got some nice beats and they had that great song with Masta Ace but beyond that I don't know their work at all.

Anyway. Kno from CunninLynguists has written an open letter to MF Doom about the way he treats his fans and the impact he's having on live hip-hop in the US. It's pretty great. Read it Here. "Holy awkward racial undertones, Batman" so real.

For the record, Doom takes the absolute piss with his fans; I can't respect that behaviour at all.

Friday, 15 August 2008

Damn DITD is looking sports heavy today. This isn't so much sport as much as it is hilarious though. Steve McClaren (former England manager) took a job at Dutch side FC Twente a couple of months ago and has picked himself up a little accent. Except...it's backwards...I mean...watch the video. That doesn't make sense does it?

This may not mean a lot to you but it pisses me off so I figured I'd blog it. Amir Khan is my favourite boxer right now, hands down; the reason being that he started his career with ITV televising his every fight, which meant I got to follow him every step of the way. He made great strides in that time, when his ITV contract was up there was talk of maybe BBC stepping back into the boxing arena (their coverage was spot on a few years back in the Eastman/Williams/Harrison/Froch era) but it wasn't to be, there was also hope that Setanta might step up due to their relationship with Frank Warren; which would have been better because Setanta is easier to get hold of than Sky. But alas he's gone with the money option (probably the right option all things considered) and I'm pretty pissed off. I'm going to have to start finding pubs to watch his fights in, his next 4 or 5 will almost certainly be classics.

This is tour footage of Biggie and the gang getting kicked out of a hotel somewhere or other. It's pretty dull footage but if you're a Wallace stan like me it's hypnotising. You forget how young the man was when he died. I'm going to listen to 'Life After Death' excuse me.

The Sun ran an incredible article on August 6th about a man who seriously likes The Supremes sitting down to listen to 12 hours of straight Grime Music. The results are life changing. Mr Dotun Adebayo found that the stint caused him to have murderous intentions, hold on though, don't fear, Mr Dotun Adebayo will not kill "I don’t have a violent nature." Whew. Thank god. The only grime artists mentioned are Crazy Titch and Dizzee Rascal but I would love to see a track by track breakdown of that list. Will it have that horrible new Wiley song that samples Daft Punk? Hey Kanye. Your move.

Ultimately I agree with Dotun Adebayo though. Why can't black people go back to making non-threatening music written by white people about their baby loves and such? Then us whites could stop being so darned scared of them all the time. Where I live there are no black people; so all I know of them is the music I hear. So when I went into town the other day I saw a "Hoodie" and thought he wanted to wear my Rolex. But I don't have a Rolex so I just nodded and asked him to hold my jar. The confusion made me buy a Snickers but that was homophobic. I'm so glad The Sun's here to tell me what to think.

Joell Ortiz has been talking debut albums on his blog. I'm particularly drawn to Rule Numero Un and Rule Numero Trois... Rule Numero Two was particularly difficult for me as I basically had 10 weeks to write and record my record. But I had a life time to prepare for it so I'm good.

Rule Numero Un: Do write about what you know and not what you think you know. – Self explanatory niggaz! There’s never a future in yo frontin’ mang!

Rule Numero Two: Take your time and do it right baby. Nothing fucks up an album more than weak mixes, tinny beats, or rushed herky jerky content. You only get to make a first impression once simpletons. It’s either you sink or swim doggy so make sure you come correct off the rip. Otherwise you get what you deserve! Rule

Nombre Trois: Just let it go. Don’t hold back now sunny, you’re there. It’s up to you. Seriously, all the preparation and long days and nights that you put into your craft have prepared you for this point. It’s up to you now. Don’t hold back and end up regretting shit. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The image above is one of many early artwork options for 'Devil In The Distance' by the way. It's actually not that early. We were almost there at that point. I still really like it though. I'll show you some more pretty soon.

There's always something about Brit rap that makes me wince. There have been too many braggers and losers, rappers with half a decent song and an album full of half rubbish songs. So Devil in the Distance by Marvin would have a lot of prejudices to overcome to please me.

From Brixton, some of Marvin's songs explicitly reference London (A track called Trocadero being an obvious example), though they could be about an inner city, any secondary school or any council estate. His lyrics, though a little broad, are clever and cleanly delivered. He raps about what's around him and has an eye and ear for the intricacies relationships and speech. The music is polished but also has the rough influences of grime and dirty beats.

What I like is Marvin takes his ego out of his work. He makes political statements without being polemic. Get By (Be Good) is a list of ills (from education to CCTV to housing) without forcing the issue of how hard it is, nor does it offer any solution. Goodbye is about gun crime, without judging if it's a good or bad thing but about why it is.

He's also effective at building ideas from lots of tiny details, and this is not better demonstrated than on Richard's Nan . This song is a hundred flashing camera phone photos, burning an image of community one mosaic at a time. The raft of Marvin's community are represented: the boys, the girls, the gangs, the racists, the gays; a reflected conscience made of the sum of it's parts.

Devil in the Distance is an intelligent album that tells its own story. It is confident enough not to ask for anything from you as it has its own energy to survive. I am very pleased.

According to Met figures released today, the number of people charged with possessing a knife has fallen by 50% since 2004. Does that sound realistic? Well yes it does actually. The Met go on to say that they expect those numbers to increase massively over the next few months as they carry out a new operation called Blunt 2 or Don't Ignore Knife Crime Any More (DIKCAM) as many in the know have dubbed it. Blunt 2 came into operation in May, it involves a load of stop and searches (awesome) and some metal detector gates at tube stations for all those cross-London knife smugglers (knives are hard to come by in some sections of London known as the 'No Woolworths Zones').

"As a result more people are being arrested and charged for carrying knives. Since the beginning of April this year, 1187 people (887 adults and 300 youths) have been charged with possession of a knife or sharp instrument." I would personally like to see a break down of these cases, 3 adults to every youth? That seems disproportionate somewhat. Can I get a Police handbook definition of a "Sharp Instrument" too please? Because my pencil can be deadly.

Sunday, 10 August 2008

We were just watching a documentary about Isaac Hayes and Stax Records the other night. Some of the things he achieved, genuinely an awesome talent and a man who wanted to do so much more than just sing. He'd been sick for a while so while this isn't a great shock it is a great loss. It's been a bad weekend.

Saturday, 9 August 2008

One of the greats and a man that I had a level of absolute respect for. I remember we were listing performers a couple of years back for whom we had ultimate, unquestionable respect (I think the qualification was "An entertainer you would bow to if you met them") Bernie Mac was one of those people. He transcended race, nationality, sex and everything you could imagine to become one of the funniest men on the planet. Bernie Mac's passing is a great loss to the world. I am truly upset by his death. I want to honour him in some way.

He's pretty much over everything. He actually had the nerve this week to call Hollyoaks "Fucking awful" and claim that "It just breeds p***** - all these people walking around with this chicken-in-a-basket fame, talking about going to LA, you know?" yes that's James Cordon, on his way to L.A to executive produce the US remake of the god awful 'Gavin and Stacey'. Ooh she's a bit shocking; she swears at everything in a funny Welsh accent. Ooh he's a dim Essex boy who talks at 2 miles per hour and can't quite believe the rudeness of it all. I can't front, Rob Brydon is hilarious at his worst and the other Welsh girl from Little Britain, she's pretty good. But the show is awful and James Cordon is the worst thing about it. I don't know why it got such a huge push, maybe it was because it came post-Mighty Boosh and BBC3 needed to justify its remit (what's next? Snog Marry Avoid?) but the way James Cordon carried himself with the limelight was horrendous. He's now the host of some kind of Big Brother program and was easily the most embarrassing, least funny host of an award show when he was in charge of the NME awards last year. Ooh he just said "Brap" how random. Oh my lord my sides are splitting he is doing the robot. I'm serious, right now James Cordon off Gavin and Stacey is doing the robot. Genius! James actually used to be in Hollyoaks (indeed) and while I will pretty much defend Hollyoaks to anybody who wants to challenge it (I don't even like soaps but I fuck with Hollyoaks) I've wanted an excuse to tap into my absolute unparalleled dislike for James Cordon "I can't tell you the sheer disdain I have for the place and the people" Oh look he's doing Kung Fu chops! At the NME awards? This man is crazy! The hilarity doesn't stop! NO WAIT! STOP! NO! OH MY GOD THIS IS WAY TOO FUNNY! THE RUNNING MAN?

Wow. The BBC reports that home repossession has risen 41% in the first six months of 2008 to 18,900 with estimated year end repossessions hitting 45,000. That's several hundred percent. I've seen a few repossessions going down on the estates over the last couple of months, that is some serious, serious stress. Nobody needs that.

Most people have no clue how frustrating and draining the process of "Gentrification" can be to working class areas. The fluctuating economy has kept a lot of South London protected to an extent but it's definitely affected the potential job markets for local people, the class war is very, very real in the UK right now. The current gentrification of music is having the same affect. It's become more and more frustrating to see the soul of the music I make ripped out because it's an "In" trend. Too many suburban college boys read the Russel Simmons and Rick Rubin Def Jam story for my liking, culturally we're stagnating in the UK and the US. There are hurdles we are told to tackle that have nothing to do with us. Club nights that have nothing to do with us dictate whether or not our songs are going to be supported in certain media circles. When did they get that power? When did we give it to them? In these times of limited record sales, extended media and short attention spans, the privileged few call the shots. I'm going to get into this heavy on my second album.

Giggs. Purely because he spits hard South London shit. I don't even know if I like it yet. But honestly Grime has been getting really, really, really fake lately. I can only listen to authentic hard shit from the UK. It's like the American stuff has an expected level of bullshit that I don't want in Britain. Some times you just need some belligerence in your life.

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

I feel good knowing that there will be a new Jay-Z album before 2009. Don't ask me how I know, I just know; he hinted that Kanye might produce it. Could you imagine that? In today's rap age? That could be another milli-week. I don't know why this video made me think about a new Jay-Z album but it did, the video itself is pretty funny.

Monday, 4 August 2008

It's my second release date today. In the music industry you sometimes have a few release dates, one for radio, one for online, one for press, well last week was really the online and official release date, this week is the everything else release date. To celebrate (crap celebration) Jack made a little sampler of the album for us to put up on the MySpace for you to download. It's the first verse from every album track, some with the chorus, it's all mixed with sirens and glass smashes for your listening pleasure. So if you haven't decided whether or not you're going to part with your £7.90 this fine day, check out the sampler on the MySpace...

I wrote on my site when this retrial began that I understood Barry George to be innocent. I'm both ecstatic and absolutely livid that Barry George has been released from prison. Ecstatic that a man who had 8 years have been deleted by a disgusting, disgraceful, sickening miscarriage of justice is free to pick up what's left of his life. I am livid that he will not get his 8 years back and that now 10 years since Jill Dando's murder; finding an actual culprit will be virtually impossible. There were political forces at play here, I hope to see Barry pick up a fat compensation package and I hope to see thousands of bogus DNA charges appealed over the coming months.

Gary McKinnon is wanted by the US government to be tried for hacking into their military computers, they claim he caused crazy damage and had sinister motives. He claims he wanted to find out about secret aliens (if I could hack, I would so find out about the secret aliens), he didn't cause any damage and admits guilt. Everybody knows there's no justice like American justice and frankly if our government has the opportunity to protect one of us from the convoluted Guantanamo Bay arm of American Law then it absolutely must. Or so you'd think, he's spent the last 6 years fighting with the British courts against a fast track extradition to the US so he can face trial in Britain and he is losing. He's now ready to take the matter to the European courts where I hope he can have a little more success (he probably will to be honest, they're less concerned about pissing off the allies...sometimes it's a bad thing, in this instance it could be positive). The idea of being fast-track extradited to America for a breach of "National security" chills me to my bone. You probably knew all that, I just wanted to make sure everybody clicks the link below with the full and certain knowledge that this shit is fucked up.

John Lydon is having a bit of a summer. He's touring with Sex Pistols again and he's getting in as much trouble as possible. I watched him retort to the Kele Okereke affair on 'The One Show' the other day, it was pretty amusing, I'm not sure whether "My grandchildren are Jamaican" is a response to any other question than "Are you a racist?" which is pretty excellent. Today he's in the headlines for calling Amy Winehouse "Aimless" (no doubt about that) and claiming that she's imitating black music and taking drugs to cover up for a lack of talent. To quote NME.com on the subject...

"There's not a single word that means anything. It's not like these songs are deeply moving or inspirational or cultural in any way you could find useful."

Referring to his distrust of artists influenced by jazz, the punk icon said: "I don't like pale imitations and shades of things and I am always wary when people go jazzy because jazz is the best cover up for a lack of talent the world has ever known. It don't wash real with me.

"And the cover up for her which is probably the guilt trip is that she requires vast amounts of drugs to hide the fact that she is fake."

There can be very little argument against what John's saying. I like Amy Winehouse's songs, I can't deny it, I own her last album; I actually own her first album which sucks. But you can just see a room of advisers (label/ management) saying "Okay, she can sing, whatever we've got here we've got a singer. She's out of the Brit School though so there's not much going on in terms of artistry. How are we going to make her credible? Hmmmm...." the answer of course was to rip off a form of music that isn't directly viable to the British public, they've got a nice little white girl doing it, they can afford the best producers and song writers and they can say Radio 2 made her. Genius! It's the same process everybody out of The Brit School goes through when breaking into the pop industry. I actually wish we could go back to the days when Brit School alumni joined embarrassing girl/ boy groups like Blue and Another Level, there was transparency back then. These days you have to keep your guard up in case The Kooks turn out to be trained, or Kate Nash, or Leona Lewis, or Floetry, or The Feeling, or Adele...oh wait...

Well Dizzee's number 1. More power to him of course. But out of all the songs about having a job I am number 1. Dizzee had a song about having a job actually. Aha! Does that mean by proxy I'm number 1 for life? I think it might. I think it might almost certainly mean that.

Being serious, I was mentioned in The Guardian today in an article about anti-work songs and I was mentioned at number 1. I'm above Dolly Parton's perfect '9 To 5' and Clapham born Canibus. Go buy 'I Hate My Job' I loved that record, I toured it with Akala, Yes Boss and Goldie Lookin Chain, it was a lot of fun.

Devil In The Distance

My name is Marvin [The Martian]. I am a rapper, my debut album 'Devil In The Distance' came out Summer 2008 through NoCarbon/Universal. This is my blog. I run it with help from Tego and my producer Jack Nimble. If you want to get at me, hit me on my email whylout(at)hotmail.com.